Texas isn’t back but pre-Briles Baylor is!
That’s probably harsh, I’ve been saying all along that Matt Rhule would likely take his lumps in year one while working to achieve the macro-level culture change and roster reconstruction necessary to win “his way.” I did think that they’d handle Liberty without difficulty but looking back it looked much like many other FCS shocks I’ve seen over the years.
Liberty’s QB was pretty talented and had both the mobility and the arm to make the most of their spread spacing. From there, as I’ve long noted, EVERYONE has talented skill players. It’s like when you get to the NCAA tournament and find out that Creighton has good guard play. Yeah, your school/league/division doesn’t have a monopoly on all the 4.8 or better guys in the country with good hands and the ability to learn to run routes just as the major college programs don’t have a monopoly on all the solid athletes in the world that are 6-4 and under and know how to pass, dribble, and shoot.
Last year similarly opened with TCU struggling to control a South Dakota State team that boasted a solid, mobile QB throwing to a pair of likely future pros in Jake Wieneke and Dallas Goedert. Or you could check out how Eastern Washington took down Washington State. TCU and Wazzu went on to finish 6-6 and 8-5 respectively, they weren’t brilliant teams, but getting caught in a shootout with an FCS team that has a QB and some troublesome skill guys isn’t quite the auspice of doom it can appear to be.
Not to say that Baylor is fine and won’t have real growing pains this year, but while I initially laughed this off as confirmation that Rhule’s Bears are in a bad spot, looking back I think it’d be a mistake not to acknowledge that Stephen Calvert and Antonio Gandy-Golden (as well as some of their other wideouts) were actually a pretty dangerous group.
Also of note in that game was Baylor using one of my five most interesting breakout players, Blake Lynch, as their boundary cornerback in that game to try and match up with Gandy-Golden’s size and prevent them from getting beat over the top.
The league’s frontrunners, OU, OSU, and K-State all rolled this weekend against overmatched competition. OSU had the toughest draw by far with the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes but Chad President was not ready to handle an aggressive “load the box” strategy that dared him to beat a safety tandem that plays good coverage with outside throws.
My initial assumption when they announced that Ramon Richards was moving to safety was that he’d play SS so Flowers could slide over into the Daytawion Lowe/Jordan Sterns spot that he was well qualified to fill and eventually that’s exactly what happened. That’s a very good tandem that should cause problems for opponents. Glenn Spencer always coaches up that D to be able to force opponents to beat them throwing the ball outside the hash marks, from there he may or may not have CBs that can own that challenge or not. We still don’t know for sure.
Texas of course floundered about and played terrible defense yet again vs a spread-option system with explosive ballcarriers. I believe they’ll pare down the defense some and eventually play good football, not facing dual-threat QBs as much in future games will probably also help. Their offense was better than much of the post-game commentary is suggesting, I think a lot of the reactions are the results of two factors:
- People didn’t appreciate how much of an adjustment it would be to go from a run-centric spread to a more passing-oriented attack. Texas’ passing game components didn’t practice the dropback game much at all last season, they specialized in running the ball downhill with D’Onta Foreman.
- Texas lost a game they were favored to win by 18 points, so even though they scored 41 (21 on D/ST, 20 on O) despite atrocious FG kicking, all analysis will zero in on “why Texas lost.”
The offense wasn’t great and they insisted on playing 11 personnel packages that don’t match the roster’s strengths, but it wasn’t quite the disaster it’s been made out to be. Getting down 21-7 in a heartbeat early was another reason for the offensive struggles and failure to establish the run.
I didn’t see any of TCU but it’s surely a good sign that they mauled their overmatched week 1 opponent. Good teams maul bad teams.
I was surprised that West Virginia lost, Josh Jackson was a bit further along than I expected and the Holgorsen-Spavital combo got into some schematic troubles trying to balance the run and pass. They needed to run the ball much more but were struggling to do so, I suspect maybe their FB/TEs on the roster were good at blocking in the QB run game (which is easier) but are a bit overmatched trying to handle DEs but I’d have to watch closer to be sure.
Texas and West Virginia are both looking at the problem this year of how to maintain the ability to run the ball when they want to from spread sets that lack either a good blocking TE or a dual-threat QB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH5Ecpjk66g
Worth noting that Liberty’s QB goes by “Buckshot” in honor of Buckshot Jones of NASCAR fame.
Rhule had some really elucidating comments when asked about issues in the secondary during his press conference today,
“On one touchdown, the whole defense was playing one defense, and three guys are playing something else. The last touchdown, a guy comes out of coverage. And that makes it hard, then, on [defensive coordinator] Phil, because they’re checking and they know what we’re in when we show a blitz, and we’re showing it really early because we’re just young and excited. He wants to go to another defense, but he’s afraid to, because every time we did, half the guys got it and half the guys didn’t.”
That’s fun. Gets back to the “FCS teams with legit QBs can get you in a shootout” point also.
Baylor is starting over with new schemes, lots to master.
Yeah, to my eyes I saw Cover 2, 3, and 7. Liberty’s crucial TD in the 4th Q came on Cover 2 where the safety came up to cover a crossing route instead of staying back and covering a go route.
Gotta think Baylor’s DBs were surprised to discover there was a coverage besides Cover 4.
Ha! It had served them pretty well. Rhule is going to need time to develop this secondary but I thought they looked pretty bought in and ran to the football well.
Kinda reminded me of watching the 2016 Iowa State Cyclones where it was like, “these guys don’t get it all yet, and some of them just aren’t very good, but they do look well coached and coordinated.”
Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t worried after the loss. Early on the most important thing isn’t necessarily the results, but the level of toughness and attitude team was playing with. Worst thing you could see is a dejected team. I didn’t see that.
True freshman CB Harrison Hand looked like a revelation. Could be a great one. You liked him in your recruiting breakdown.
Like your take on the Baylor loss. Like I said the other day: lots of Baylor fans are losing their damn minds, and this season probably isn’t going to be a ton of fun, but at the same time…I don’t see anything to convince me that this isn’t a fixable problem for this staff. The defense was wretched, but they’re also very young and missing something like 8 guys in the defensive backfield to injuries and suspension even on top of the new scheme. The offense was downright encouraging – not a Briles offense, obviously, but 45 points is significantly less glitchy than I would expect from day one under a brand new, slower offense. Especially when you consider that that side of the ball isn’t wildly deep itself.
You expect the offense to be solid against an FCS team but it would have been VERY easy for them to struggle in week one because it’s all so new. So the offense is on track, or better, for what reasonable minds would have expected.
The defense is behind but that’s not too shocking or concerning. There’s no question that was a bad loss and lowered the ceiling for the season but that doesn’t mean the team won’t have moments this year or that Rhule is the wrong guy.
Yeah, ’bout where I’m at. I could have seen us push 10 wins if literally every 50/50 question broke in our favor regarding things like injuries and people picking up schemes well and new faces surpassing expectations. Right now they’re mostly breaking against us, so that clearly isn’t on the table, but nothing that broke last Saturday really looked…systemic to me. Rhule’s saying the right things in press appearances too, IMO. Not happy, but no panic.
Re: The WVU run game, they started to find some room/Justin Crawford started to make guys miss in the middle of the game but then they started basically just throwing the ball after that backbreaking holding penalty/Holgo unsportsmanlike penalty. I also felt like they should have run the ball more late (6.3 ypc for the team, Crawford averaged 8.2) but Tech was daring WVU to throw for most of the game.
I think WVU matched up athletically with Va. Tech, which is probably a good sign for how they will look against the Big 12. The defense has three relatively underwhelming opponents coming up (ECU, Delaware St., Kansas). It’s a perfect opportunity to get some of the new guys some snaps and build a little depth before a bye week and then the Big 12 gauntlet.
The problem I saw though was that the Hokies were playing 3 over 3 on the bubble screen, 2 over 1 on the boundary, and then 6 in the box. So the best move is the bubble but then you have to throw it wide to the field and beat good personnel out there.
Shoulda just run it anyways because strangely the WVU front 5 and RB were probably better than the Hokie front 6.
[Beavis voice]
Heh.
You said bubble but.
That was a crucial point. Hokies were able to own the screen game even just playing 3 over 3.
“Texas and West Virginia are both looking at the problem this year of how to maintain the ability to run the ball when they want to from spread sets that lack either a good blocking TE or a dual-threat QB.”
The only way I think you do that is to sufficiently threaten the defense with the deep ball, particularly off play-action. If the defense has no problem (a) spinning to single-high or (b) aggressively moving up their safeties in quarters coverage, then the offense is always going to be -1 in the run game without a dual-threat QB or a good TE to create an extra gap. So … you gotta get the defense to play more honest against the deep ball. Or switch personnel. But knowingly getting outnumbered in the run game … not super-productive.
But I don’t think what VT did, for instance, was particularly vulnerable to the deep ball. The Mountaineers’ wide splits kinda worked against themselves because it allowed a deep safety and overall team pursuit to get involved against the bubble game.
I do wonder if West Virginia could have just run the ball on numbers and been fine.
Also, that was one of those games which would have been a lot more interesting in November.
WV had to replace a ton of production, and they still looked pretty decent the other night. There are some damned good coaching staffs in this conference.
From what I remember, VT was playing pretty aggressive with their strong safety. On WVU’s last TD, I remember he was about 5 yards of the line of scrimmage and it screamed “throw it deep”. (Spoiler: WVU did and it worked.)
Holgorsen will probably get it figured out though.
Maybe so, I missed that one and noticed more of them playing their FS, whip, and CB wide but then the LBs in the box vs trips.